Master Languages with Zabaan.

I took basic Urdu lessons at Zabaan under Ali Taqi, and got completely hooked. For anyone who is enthusiastic about a language, this is the place to go to. In a detailed yet humorous manner, Ali manages to get one to understand the basics of Urdu in just three classes (if you do the homework). I highly recommend learning Urdu at Zabaan, I had a great experience going for the group classes.

Zabaan is a professionally run school for language lovers. Having studied both Hindi and Urdu at Zabaan for over two years, I have nothing but praise for the hard work all the staff puts in to make learning interesting, inspiring and efficient. Teachers are well trained, friendly and understand the difficulties students face with a new language and/or script. Extra points for the online booking system. Shabash Zabaan!

I couldn’t have asked for a more beginner-friendly or comprehensive Hindi learning experience. Ali ji has been very patient and flexible to my needs, and he has pushed my Hindi learning capabilities to the next level. I was able to pass my schools Hindi test with flying colors thanks to Zabaan. I highly recommend it.

Here are some reasons why I decided to learn Hindi. First of all, I grew up in a Buddhist family; the customs and systems of thought in Buddhism has had deep influence on me. At first I thought learning Sanskrit would give me a key directly to the Sutras; however I soon realized that learning Sanskrit with absolutely no prior knowledge would be an intellectual feat. I found out that both Sanskrit and Hindi use the Devanagari script as its alphabet and many words in Hindi have their origin from Sanskrit, so I decided it would be a good idea to start off with Hindi. Secondly, I chose to learn Hindi because I wanted to give myself a challenge. After learning Italian and a little bit of French I realized that the European languages would have much in common with one another. To learn a language with a totally different alphabet and writing system would be much more difficult than learning another European language. This huge linguistic gap between Hindi and the languages which I already would give me a broader horizon of the world. Moreover, as I have a keen interest in linguistics, learning Hindi would give me more references to examine what I have learned in my linguistics courses. At this moment I am in the middle of my courses and after looking back I think it really required a lot of effort to reach this stage. At the beginning the main difficulty was matching each Devanagari letter with its pronunciation. After having managed that, the next thing was to endow these sounds and letter combinations with meaning. At the point where I am right now, the main task is to consolidate different grammar rules and keep learning new words. I want to thank the Zabaan team for giving me positive pressure and enlightening guidance throughout the learning process. This is my third week in New Delhi and I can already use simple colloquial language on the streets to express myself and avoid hassle.